It's "Doylean Honors" Season!
Nominate Your 2023 & 2024 Favorites
September 11, 2024 — Now is the time to nominate your favorite recent works of Doylean fiction, poetry, performing art, visual art, and scholarship for our annual "Doylean Honors" awards. We've made one big change this time around: In each category, we will award one Doylean Honor for a Sherlockian work, and one for a non-Sherlockian work. You are free to make up to five nominations for each. The nomination forms will be posted here as they go live, and the deadline for nominations is November 15, 2024. So do it now (or soon)! Tell our selection committees what fine Doylean creative and scholarly works from 2023 and 2024 are worthy of recognition at our fourth annual awards ceremony. As ever, the event will be held at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Workshop in New York City, during the long "Birthday Weekend" in January. This time around it will be on January 16, 2024, starting at 11:15 a.m. sharp. We hope to hear from you soon with your nominations, and to see you at the Bookshop in January. If you cannot attend in person, you can still enjoy the event live online, courtesy of Doings of Doyle. Register for free streaming right here!
The Terror Is Back, with
Matches that Are Doubly Terrifying
July 17, 2024 — Making fire can be as terrible as losing it, as Cynthia Brown explains in her essay accompanying page 8 of Margie Deck and Nancy Holder's "The Terror of Blue John Gap" project. Brown's work, an introduction to page 8 by Deck and Holder, and a tasty new essay for page 1 by Steve Mason, are ready to read in the Blue John Gap.
Worldwide Doyle 2024 Is Watchable Now
July 17, 2024 — Thanks to Mark Jones of Doings of Doyle, all four of this year's presentations from the Portsmouth Libraries' "Worldwide Doyle 2024" events are available to view for free, in their entirety on the Doings of Doyle YouTube channel. Thank you Mark and thank you DoD!
A Truly Picture-esque Meeting
of the Bimetallic Question
May 14, 2024 — We are late (but, we hope, not too late) with our report that the Bimetallic Question is meeting TONIGHT to conduct another “All of Doyle” session, focusing this time on ACD's writing on photography during the 1880s. The reading list is a selection of short and interesting articles, all of which are available at Alexis Barquin’s priceless Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia: After Cormorants with a Camera (1881), On the Slave Coast with a Camera (1882), Up an African River with a Camera (1882), Dry Plates on a Wet Moor (1882), Southsea: Three Days in Search of Effects (1883), To the Waterford Coast and Along It (1883), A Day on "The Island" (1884), Easter Monday with a Camera (1884), Arran in Autumn (1885), With a Camera on an African River (1885). If you would like to receive a Zoom link for the event, please send a request to info@bimetallicquestion.org.
"A Common Newsletter" Is in the Mail …
and Off to the Races
April 4, 2024 — Volume 4, number 1 of our newsletter has entered the postal system. So, sometime in the next few weeks it will arrive on the doorsteps of subscribers around the world. Readers will receive the latest news about our Doylean Honors and Wessex Cup events held in January at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop. Other features and news include ACD in Parliament and Windsor Castle, page 7 of the "Blue John Gap" manuscript from Margie Deck and Nancy Holder's Blue John Gap Project (accompanied by the first few paragraphs of a characteristically madcap essay by Paul Thomas Miller of Southsea), and more. In due course an electronic edition will be available for free right here. The photograph above was snapped by Christopher Zordan on January 11, during the 2nd running of the Wessex Cup. Al Rosenblatt, Curtis Armstrong, Ashley Polasek, Matt Hall, and Peggy MacFarlane watch Madeline Quiñones and Monica Schmidt urge their wayward wind-up ponies to cross the finish line while Mark Jones records the progress of the race.
The Terror Is Back, and
This Time It Is Terribly Big
March 31, 2024 — Like powerful forces (actually, they are powerful!) that return to terrify the innocent again and again, Margie Deck and Nancy Holder are back with yet another combination of commentary about, and terror inspired by, ACD's "The Terror of Blue John Gap." Page 7 of their project is now online — with a facsimile (and transcription) of that page of ACD's autograph manuscript, accompanied by Margie and Nancy's own commentary ("Intuition & Insight") and new essays by Paul Thomas Miller ("What Is That Mark?") and Phil Bergem ("Conan Doyle and Elephants"). Read and feel "a most unpleasant sinking of [your] heart."
The Envelope Please ... for the
Third Annual Doylean Honors
January 11, 2024 — It is with pleasure, pride, and great respect that we announce our 2024 Doylean Honorees, who were honored today in a ceremony at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop in New York City.
For Lifetime Service:
For excellence in the "Fiction and Poetry" category:
• Derrick Belanger for the short story "The Joyce-Armstrong Confession" in Steel True, Blade Straight (Belanger Books)
• David Marcum for the short story "Fate's Brushes" in Steel True, Blade Straight (Belanger Books)
• Lee Murray for the short story "Māoriland Blue" in The Terror of Blue John Gap Project (ACD Society)
For excellence in the "Visual Arts" category:
• Vincent Mallié for the illustrations in the graphic novel adaptation of The First Adventure of Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet (Magnetic Press)
For excellence in the "Scholarly Writing" category:
• Emily Alder for the article Arctic Ghosts: Whale Hunting and Haunting in Arthur Conan Doyle’s "'The Captain of the “Pole-Star'" in Victorian Studies (North American Victorian Studies Association)
• Douglas Kerr for the article Arthur Conan Doyle, Eugenics, and the Hand of God in Literature & History (Sage)
• Sylvia A. Pamboukian for the chapter Dying Game: Unrepentant Outlaws in Christie and Doyle in Agatha Christie and the Guilty Pleasure of Poison (Palgrave MacMillan)
Congratulations to all! To see and hear the entire awards ceremony, visit Doings of Doyle after January 21 (when it will be posted).
"Stark Munro" on "All of Doyle"
with the Bimetallic Question
January 4, 2024 — The Bimetallic Question’s next “All of Doyle” meeting will be held next Tuesday, January 16. They will discuss ACD’s quasi-autobiographical novel, “The Stark Munro Letters,” as well as the short story “A Medical Document.” Both are available online in Alexis Barquin’s indispensable and incomparable Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. In addition, Edith Pounden will give a short presentation on Dr. George Budd, ACD’s school friend and (briefly!) colleague, who is the basis for a character in the novel. If you would like to receive a Zoom link for the event, please send a request to info@bimetallicquestion.org.
Doylean Honors and the Wessex Cup,
January 11 at The Mysterious Bookshop
December 30, 2023 — Our third presentation of Doylean Honors and second running of the Wessex Cup are coming up! The proceedings will be hosted (as ever) by Otto Penzler at The Mysterious Bookshop — on January 11, 2024, starting at 11:15 a.m. sharp. So don’t be late! If you cannot attend in person, you can watch the whole business live online courtesy of Doings of Doyle, producer Mark Jones, and web wizard Matt Hall. Register now (it’s free), right here. Equestrian Outfitter Extraordinaire Peggy MacFarlane has been hard at work equipping the Wessex Cup competitors in incomparable outfits. Pictured above is Mavis (owned by Madeline Quiñones), of whom Peggy says, “Mavis and her Owner Madeline are as cute as a couple of buttons, but underestimate them at your peril. They’re in deep with Moriarty!”
"A Common Newsletter" Is in the Mail …
with Views of a Gap and a Gate
November 23, 2023 — Volume 3, number 3 of our newsletter has entered the postal system. So, sometime in the next few weeks it will arrive on the doorsteps of subscribers around the world. Readers will receive the latest news about our Doylean Honors and Wessex Cup events coming up on January 11 at Otto Penzler's The Mysterious Bookshop. Other features and news include the location of Walcot Old Place, page 6 of the "Blue John Gap" manuscript from Margie Deck and Nancy Holder's Blue John Gap Project (accompanied by the first few paragraphs of a speluncean essay by Mark Jones of Doings of Doyle), recent ACD sightings, and more. In due course an electronic edition will be available for free right here.
The Terror Is Back, and It's Gone Global
November 10, 2023 — Margie Deck and Nancy Holder have returned with a combination of commentary about, and terror inspired by, ACD's "The Terror of Blue John Gap." Page 6 of their project is now online — with a facsimile (and transcription) of that page of ACD's autograph manuscript, accompanied by Margie and Nancy's own commentary ("The Hero's Journey") and a new essay by Mark Jones ("Caves and Caverns") inspired by Crichton Porteous's Derbyshire guidebook, Caves and Caverns of Peakland. Also new on the "Terror" website is a terrifying addition to Page 1 — a new story featuring the Terror ("Māoriland Blue"), set in New Zealand by award-winning author Lee Murray. Read and shiver!
Questions? Comments? Ideas?
Please email us at acdsocy@gmail.com.
By the way, if you want to support the ACD Society more generously, please feel free to send a larger Paypal or check to the Green Bag (the organization that is collecting our dues and paying our bills now and will for the foreseeable future be covering the difference between dues coming in and expenses going out). It is a 501(c)(3) and will gladly send a receipt.
Thank you for reading!
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